Daniel Harrison, the first Allen Forte Professor of Music Theory, has focused his research on tonal theory in the music of the Common-Practice Era (1725-1900) as well as that of 20th-century composers.
Harrison earned his doctorate at Yale, where his dissertation adviser was Allen Forte, the faculty member in whose honor this professorship was established. Harrison's dissertation on the music of Max Reger was the springboard for his 1994 book "Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music: A Renewed Dualist Theory and an Account of Its Precedents." He has also investigated ways in which a variety of 20th-century composers have maintained, adapted and developed traditional compositional materials. Other projects include studies of 17th- and 18th-century tonality, dissonant tonics and post-tonal tonality, Paul Hindemith's music theories, an investigation into implied claims of jazz theory about tonality, and various matters relating post-common-practice tonality to psychoacoustics and music cognition.
The Yale professor's interest in pop music analysis led to the essay "After Sundown: The Beach Boys' Experimental Music" in the collection "Understanding Rock," and he appeared in Don Was' 1995 documentary on Brian Wilson, titled "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times."
In addition to his Ph.D. (1986), Harrison holds an M.Phil. degree from Yale (1984) and a B.A. in music from Stanford University (1981). He taught at the University of Rochester 1987-2003, both in the College Music Department (which he chaired 1996-1997 and 1999-2001) and at the Eastman School of Music. He came to Yale in 2003.
Harrison studied organ with Herbert Nanney at Stanford and with Robert Baker at Yale. He was assistant organist for 12 years at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester.
He received the Society for Music Theory's Young Scholar Award for "Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music." He has four times served as a fellow at the Mannes Institute for the Advanced Study of Music Theory. His other honors include Mellon Junior Faculty and faculty research grants from the University of Rochester and Stanford University's Steven Fox Memorial Prize for "unusual scholarly promise." In 2004, he was named a Class of 1960 Fellow at Williams College.
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